thoughts (and links) of a retired "social scientist" as he tries to make sense of the world.....

what you get here

This is not a blog which expresses instant opinions on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers as jumping-off points for some reflections about our social endeavours.

So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Admiring - and meeting - Remarkable People

I was once asked who I admired – and didn’t find it easy to answer. The dictionary definition (“to regard with wonder, pleasure or approval”)
doesn’t seem to me to go far enough. For me, to admire is “to look up to” and
has connotations not only of skill but of moral courage. I can admire someone’s
eloquence or writings – but not necessarily the person (not, at least in the
absence of knowing him/her). I can list some of my “heroes” – people who shone
a light at an important stage in my development – and whose work is still worth
reading. They would include George Orwell, Reinhardt Niebuhr, EH Carr, RH
Tawney, Karl Popper, Ivan Illich……and Tony Crosland who was the only one whom I
was fortunate enough to meet and talk with (briefly) when he visited my local
Labour Party when I was its chairman in the early 1960s - a few years after he
had written the definitive Future of Socialism.

But it was his colleague Hugh Gaitskell whom I really admired for the courage he showed in the late 1950s – as Leader
of the Opposition – in standing up to fight for what he believed in. I had talked
with him at his house in the late 1950s (invited with other promising young
reformers) and was transfixed listening on the radio to his defiant speech at Labour's 1960 party conference where two unilateralist resolutions were carried and the official policy
document on defence was rejected. Gaitskell thought these were disastrous
decisions and made a passionate speech where he stressed that he would "fight
and fight and fight again to save the party we love". This was at a time
when I was highly ambivalent about the nuclear issue and would shortly
afterwards become an active nuclear disarmer. But I had to admire his courage
and oratory.

Such a combination of leadership with respect for both
people and organisational learning is rare indeed

These memories of remarkable people I’ve met were sparked
off by an interview with Senator Bennie Saunders in the interesting Orion Magazine. He too I met (in the late 1980s) when he was
the “democratic socialist” mayor of Burlington, Vermont, USA. I happened to be
in Vermont, knew of him and asked to meet him (as a fellow democratic socialist
politician). He has shown immense guts not only in the various fights he has
taken on with corporate interests in his attempt to represent the ordinary
citizen – but for the simple act of not disguising his basic values.

Perhaps the most remarkable person I ever met was a Romanian
- Cornel Coposu – then (1991) Leader of the newly re-established Christian
Democratic Peasant Party who was
condemned in 1947 to spend 15 years in prison for his activities in the
National Peasant Party. After his release, Coposu started work as an unskilled
worker on various construction sites (given his status as a former prisoner, he
was denied employment in any other field), and was subject to surveillance
and regular interrogation.[]

His wife was also prosecuted in 1950 during a
rigged trial and died in 1965 soon after her release, from an illness
contracted in prison. Coposu managed to keep contact with PNŢ sympathisers, and
re-established the party as a clandestine group during the 1980s, while
imposing its affiliation to the Christian
Democrat International.

I also had brief but one-to-one meetings with two great German Presidents - Richard von Weizsacker and Johannes Rau. Weizsacker
was a Christian Democract and President 1984-1994 and West Berlin Mayor
1981-84. Rau was a Social Democrat; President 1999-2004 and Head of the
huge RheinWestphalen Land (Region) from 1978-98. I was lucky enough to
meet both of these men informally and can therefore vouch personally for the
humility they brought to their role. Weizsacker was holidying in Scotland and
popped in quietly to pay his respects to the leader of the Regional Council. As
the (elected) Secretary to the majority party, I had private access to the
Leader’s office and stumbled in on their meeting. Rau I also stumbled across
when in a Duisberg hotel on Council business. He was not then the President –
but I recognised him when he came in with his wife and a couple of assistants,
introduced myself ( as a fellow social democrat); gave him a gift book on my
Region which I happened to be carrying and was rewarded with a chat.

And then there was Tisa von der Schulenburg - Prussian aristocrat, nun and artist in 1920s Berlin who
supported her brother in the plot to assassinate Hitler whom I met a few years
before her death (at 97!) – at an exhibition of the sketches she had done in
the 1939s of the Durham miners.

"Tisa" Schulenburg's life was by any standard
remarkable. Having grown up among the Prussian nobility and witnessed the
trauma of Germany's defeat in the Great War, she frequented the salons of
Weimar Berlin, shocked her family by marrying a Jewish divorce in the 1930s,
fled Nazi Germany for England, worked as an artist with the Durham coal miners,
and spent her later years in a convent in the Ruhr.

Her experience of the darker moments of the 20th century was
reflected in her sculpture and drawing, in which the subject of human suffering
and hardship was a constant theme - whether in the form of Nazi terror or the
back-breaking grind of manual labour at the coal face.

When she heard that I was a politician from Strathclyde Region - with its mining traditions in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire - she presented me with a signed portfolio of her 1930s drawings of the NE English miners for onward donation to the Scottish miners.

About Me

Can be contacted at bakuron2003@yahoo.co.uk
Political refugee from Thatcher's Britain (or rather Scotland) who has been on the move since 1991. First in central Europe - then from 1999 Central Asia and Caucasus. Working on EU projects - related to building capacity of local and central government. Home base is an old house in the Carpathian mountains and Sofia

about the blog

Writing in my field is done by academics - and gives little help to individuals who are struggling to survive in or change public bureaucracies. Or else it is propoganda drafted by consultants and officials trying to talk up their reforms. And most of it covers work at a national level - whereas most of the worthwhile effort is at a more local level. The restless search for the new dishonours the work we have done in the past. As Zeldin once said - "To have a new vision of the future it is first necessary to have new vision of the past".I therefore started this blog to try to make sense of the organisational endeavours I've been involved in; to see if there are any lessons which can be passed on; to restore a bit of institutional memory and social history - particularly in the endeavour of what used to be known as "social justice". My generation believed that political activity could improve things - that belief is now dead and that cynicism threatens civilisationI also read a lot and wanted to pass on the results of this to those who have neither the time or inclination -as well as my love of painting, particularly the realist 20th century schools of Bulgaria and Belgium.A final motive for the blog is more complicated - and has to do with life and family. Why are we here? What have we done with our life? What is important to us? Not just professional knowledge - but what used to be known, rather sexistically, as "wine, women and song" - for me now in the autumn of my life as wine, books and art....

quotes

“I will act as if what I do makes a difference”
William James 1890.

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas"
JM Keynes (1935)

"We've spent half a century arguing over management methods. If there are solutions to our confusions over government, they lie in democratic not management processes"
JR Saul (1992)

"There are four sorts of worthwhile learning - learning about · oneself
· learning about things
· learning how others see us
· learning how we see others"
E. Schumacher (author of "Small is Beautiful" (1973) and Guide for the Perplexed (1977))

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell, 1950

Followers

der arme Dichter (Carl Spitzweg)

my alter ego

the other site

In 2008 I set up a website in the (vain) hope of developing a dialogue around issues of public administration reform - particularly in transition countries where I have been living and working for the past 26 years. The site is www.freewebs.com/publicadminreform and contains the major papers I have written over the years about my attempts to reform various public organisations in the various roles which I've had - politician; academic/trainer; consultant.